February 22, 2007

A Period of Adjustment

The first week or so is simply crazy, but especially the process the Dutch call “stewing.” The milk comes in, a process the violence of which took both of us by surprise, but the baby doesn’t have much of an idea what to do with it, and the initial pressure is more than his little mouth is able to deal with. We spent a lot of time mushing his face into the boob. There are lots of parts of the process that an “intelligent” design would improve upon, and this is definitely one of them.

It’s also crazy how small he was. Now, six months on, I occasionally see a very young baby out and about and think again of what it is like to have this little thing in your hands. He never struck me as very fragile—I’d been worried about that, that it would be like handling glass all the time—but he was very very small. No hat fit him, his socks were absurdly tiny, he made small sounds and small gestures. Adorable, of course. And now somehow impossible to imagine.